This week I have prepared something very special for you – let’s put aside eBay, wholesale and eCommerce for awhile and take a look at one specific way of making money online I have been practising with great success for the last few months. Yes, I’ll share with you exact strategy that generated me £1349 in ONE MONTH alone, and yes – I worked on this just 4 hours in total (1 hour every week)!

Question: How to get extremely wealthy? As wealthy as Warren Buffett for example?

Answer: by using Money to Make More Money!

In some way it relates to eCommerce World as well – we buy stock for wholesale prices and sell for retail prices to make a profit. But Warren Buffett didn’t open a B&M shop or a fast food restaurant chain, no – he used money to invest in financial instruments, such as stocks and shares. I have always been interested in such financial markers, stock trading and generally, in “using money to make more money” concept. Years ago I was heavily involved in Betfair trading, which is actually quite similar to stock market day trading. But already back then I realized that day trading is not for me:

It was a very boring way of spending your day, glued to PC;

It was very stressful;

Potential earnings were some way limited, at least for my trading techniques.

But still to this day, from time to time, I was looking for opportunities to invest money to make more money. With increased profits from my info products business and eCommerce stuff, I wanted to find a way I could invest my profits into some sort of financial instruments to let my money make more money, hands free way!

Problem is that with most traditional financial investment instruments, such as stocks, mutual funds, savings accounts etc. your potential ROI is very small. Risks vary from one instrument to other but in general, in my opinion, reward for taking those risks is way too small! Invest in dividend paying stocks for 5% yearly ROI? 5% per year? I would better use that money to buy a pallet of un-branded Tablets, made in China and sell off in 3 months time for 20-30% ROI on eBay. Yes, selling physical products involve way more work than financial investments but again, 5%-10% yearly returns doesn’t sound appealing to me either!

And then it happened – six months ago or so, when I was searching for some creative ways to invest money, I found a concept that totally blew my mind away! Same concept that few months later made me £1349 net profit in one month alone!!! And today, I’ll share with you exactly how I did it…

Welcome to the World’s Largest Financial Marketplace – Currency Trading!

What is Currency Trading in first place? To put it simply, it’s the World’s largest financial Marketplace with estimated turnover of more than $4 trillion each day. Currency Trading (further in text simply “Online Trading”) is a market where anyone (individuals, banks, investment firms etc.), anywhere in the World can conduct foreign exchange transactions (hence sometimes it’s called “currency exchange”). Basically, it’s all about the PRICE for currencies being traded – will it go up or down (based on all kinds of political, economical, market etc. factors), much like with STOCK MARKETS. So you try to buy “low” and sell “high” to make profit.

What makes Online Trading so unique?

Huge trading volume representing the largest asset class in the world leading to high liquidity;

If you’re looking for more detailed explanation on what Online Trading is all about, please take a look at Wikipedia page here. It may take some time for you to fully grasp how it works, especially if you know nothing about stock markets etc. but essentially, it’s not that difficult concept to understand. When I try to explain to other people what Online Trading is all about, I just say that it’s very similar to buying and selling STOCKS, with the difference that with Online Trading you buy currencies and not stocks, bonds or other financial instruments.(which are also available as we’ll discover later on)

Another interesting nuance with Online Trading is that you’re actually buying/selling currency pairs and not individual currencies. Why’s that? Because it’s is a currency exchange marketplace and to buy one currency, actually means EXCHANGING it with another one.

It looks something like this:

EUR/USD is the MOST popular currency exchange pair. But you can trade on more currency pairs plus most Online Trading platforms offer trading Gold, Silver & Oil as well as World’s leading stock exchange indexes, like SPX500, NSDQ100, DJ30, FTSE UK 100 and others.

For now, you just have to understand what Online Trading is and how you can make money from it. It’s simple, right? Buy “low” and sell “high” to make a guaranteed profit! Much like with stock markets, right? Then why 99% people lose money with this in long term? Why so many people are losing their life savings when stock markets collapse? Because the tricky part with Online Trading and stock markets is to know WHEN to get it and WHEN to get out. That’s the simplified key to success with financial trading – to know exactly WHEN to buy and to know exactly WHEN to sell!

And this is where SKILLS & EXPERIENCE plays the biggest role. Currency prices, stock prices, oil/gold prices changes based on all kinds of factors, like political/economical situation, decisions, credit ratings, storms around the World, terror acts, inflation etc. etc. A Trader (person who trades) have to learn how all these factors affect currency exchange rates to predict when prices will go up or down, to make profitable trades. Now, these skills can’t be learned by reading few books or by watching some YouTube videos. You would have to spend years upon years on practising these skills and even then, there are no guarantees that you’ll succeed. Plus it’s a well known fact that it takes a lot of nerves and gray hair to become a TOP Trader – be it Currencies, Stock markets or Betfair – principles stay the same for all Marketplaces.

At this point you should say – so, what’s the point in doing all this? EXACTLY! Chances are very slim that you could become a professional Online Trader BUT here’s the good news – you DON’T HAVE TO!

The day when I found eToro really changed the way I look at Online Trading!

eToro is a social investment network. It acts as a middleman between traders by creating special online platform and software so that whole trading process is straightforward. These days, anyone, with as little as £100 can open an account and start trading on eToro. The currency buying/selling process is so simple and visually appealing that a child could perform a trade! Just take a look at eToro’s screen shot below:

As you can see, it takes just one click to buy or sell EUR/USD currency pair. The simplicity of these Trading platforms is the number one reason why online trading is so popular these days. Tens of millions of “normal” people are trading online nowadays, from the comfort of their homes. There are dozens upon dozens of different websites and eToro alone attracts more than 5 million users. But that’s not all, eToro is the World’s first social investment network offering a brand new, UNBELIEVABLE feature called the “eToro Copy Trader”!

And this is the reason why I actually started looking into online trading! I knew about opportunities to buy and sell currencies online years ago but always stayed away as essentially, it was the same day trading concept I went through with Betfair trading. eToro has changed this and basically merged Facebook concept with online trading concept to create ultimate, social trading platform. Click on the video below to see how exactly it works:

When I saw this first time, I thought – WOW (!!!), this is such a good idea! I knew that chances of becoming a profitable trader for me are very slim and it would take long years, wasted down the drain if it didn’t work out at the end of the day!

Why spend years on learning this stuff when you can simply copy what BEST OF THE BEST are doing?

Would you spend years trying to learn how programming works to create a shopping cart? Or simply buy Open Cart, 3D Cart or any other pre-made shopping cart systems? And eToro offers just that – opportunity to copy exact trades best traders are carrying out. And this is the core concept for my system: Copy Best Traders on eToro to Make Profit WITHOUT actually doing any trading on my part!

The idea has a very simple and straightforward reasoning – to follow absolutely BEST traders and earn money from their experience and trading skills. If these top traders couldn’t make me profit in long term, there’s no chance I could do it on my own, right? Exactly!

So with this strategy, absolutely anyone, anywhere in the World, even without any experience with Currency Trading should be able to show a long term profit. Of course, there are some important questions that need to be addressed, like: which traders should I follow? How to minimize risks? How to manage investment portfolio? I’ll try to cover most important elements in this blog post to help you get up and running ASAP without wasting months learning how to best utilize eToro’s trading platform.

My System Explained

Currently, eToro allows us to copy up to five traders and I believe the best way is to maximize it to full potential and divide your money equally to 10 traders you’re following (10% goes to each bank). Obviously, the more diversified your portfolio is, the less chance of big loses when trader’s performance goes down. My general rule of thumb is to absolutely minimize potential loses, even if that means lower profit in long term. By this I mean – I only follow/copy traders with low to medium risk portfolios, with proven and positive record of at least 6 months. eToro makes this process extremely easy as you can analyse each trader’s trading style, past performance etc.

I have created a 5 filter system I use each time when looking for new traders to copy:

* Filter #1 – Trading History

This is the most important one as shows how well any particular trader performed over the last 6 months. You can also change data range to last week, last month, last year but I have found that it’s best to stick with last 6 months as this gives the most objective information.

What you’re looking for are traders with steady, increasing graphs without big jumps or long losing periods. Why? because we’re looking for professional traders who know what they’re doing, not gamblers or lucky newbies making few good trades and then losing it altogether! A perfect example of what kind of trader you want to follow:

As you can clearly see, MarianoPardo (trader’s nick name) has a proven track record of profitable trades making more than 30% yield over last 12 months.

* Filter #2 – Risk Breakdown

I’m all for high returns on my investment BUT usually they come at a price. Yes, there are traders who make 10% a day by Trading on eToro BUT they’re usually involved in high risk, high leverage trades. This is something I always try to avoid as I’m not looking for a quick million here – it’s all about steady, positive ROI in long term. That’s why you want to check out trader’s portfolio allocation graphic:

* Filter #3 – Copiers

You want to copy ONLY real traders, not people who follow & copy other traders! That’s why you want to check if trader copies anyone or all trades are made by himself:

As you can see, this Trader has only 0.47% of ALL trades coming from Copying Other people, this means that he is making his own trades in 99%+ cases.

* Filter #4 – Open Trades

Next thing you can check on trader is Open Trades. Open Trades show all trades that are currently opened by trader. What we’re looking for? Avoid traders with negative Open Trades that are opened weeks or months ago.

For example, a trader opened a trade 3 months ago, price went to the wrong direction but instead of taking loses, trader left that trade opened in hope that in future price will go back. This is what I call GAMBLING and you definitely don’t want to copy gamblers!

* Filter #5 – Trading History

Lastly, check trader’s history to see results for most recent trades. Pay close attention to number of trades executed per month – I wouldn’t choose a trader with less than 10 trades as I’m always looking for active traders that are trading each and every day.

Don’t be afraid of sellers with lots of negative trades! Even more – I would rather see some negative trades in trader’s Trading History as that would show that trader sets proper stop loss points and takes adequate loses when market goes the wrong way. You’ll see many traders on eToro with 100% positive trading history but when you check their Open Trades you’ll see why – they’ll have large, negative Open Trades left for months, so that they don’t have to close them and face loses.

Ok, so these are my TOP 5 filters to find good traders to copy on eToro! With experience, comes ability to spot good traders almost instantly so don’t be afraid if this all looks too complicated in the beginning. Once you find your first few traders to copy, next time you’ll look at all this data with more knowledge and power to separate good traders from bad ones. There are some other things you can check like Trader’s comments, 12 month trading history and others but for beginning, these 5 filters should be enough to find good, profitable traders to follow.

How to Get Started

1) Open eToro account

There’s no cost involved to use eToro. There are no sign up or monthly subscription fees involved. You could ask – what’s the point for traders to share their strategies with other people by allowing them to copy trades? That’s the best part of this – these traders get commissions from trades carried out by their followers/copiers! This means that those traders get paid based on their performance – the better they perform, the more money they earn! It’s an absolute win-win business model and I really think it’s groundbreaking feature in whole Online Trading industry.

1. With smaller amount you won’t be able to copy 10 traders as then you would have only £5 for each. Most trades are being made with very small % of the bank and with £5 you may actually not get all trades as some will be below 1p. If you absolutely must go with minimum $50 deposit, copy just one trader in the beginning (not best from risk management point of view).

2. eToro offers credits on first time deposits! The more you deposit, the more credit points you receive. And this credit applies only to first time deposits, make sure you use this promotion and get most out of your initial deposit.

3) Find 3-5 traders to follow

Once you have opened account and deposited some money, it’s time to find traders you want to copy! Stick with my 5 filter system explained in this article and find 5-10 traders. I always stick with 10 traders as that gives me managed risk when one trader starts to perform badly. When you have 10 different portfolios, risk of losing large amounts of money is minimized.

4) Evaluate traders each week (1 hour)

This is your actual, on-going work! Spend at least 30 minutes to one hour each week to analyse how your traders are performing. If you see that trader’s performance goes down, un-copy it and look for a new trader to copy. I do this by re-evaluating last month trading history graph for each trader, each month.

5) Know when to quit

Don’t be a gambler and know when to quit, even if it means taking small loses in short term! It’s crucial to monitor how your traders are performing and if you spot a negative trend, un-copy that trader, even if it means closing down some un-profitable/negative trades. It’s all about long term profits – you have to be prepared to take some loses when trader goes down, that’s part of the plan.

The Effect of Compounding

So here it is, my exact strategy that made me £1349 in one month copying other Traders! Surely, you won’t make that much from a bank of £200 BUT it’s essential to understand how compounding effect works with financial investments like these. Do you know how much could you have in one year by starting with £200 and making steady 10% ROI each month? £627.69 What about 2 years? £1,969.95 And 3 Years? £6,182.54

The problem is that most people are impatient and simply switch from one idea to another every month! That’s not how you’ll achieve long term profits with Online Trading. This game is for people who are ready to wait and be patient. Good thing is that with eToro and this simple system, it’s not like you have to work very hard on this. Anyone, with a full time job can invest few hundred pounds and try this out for at least few months. Maximum you’ll spend 30-60 minutes each week mostly to check profitable trades!

Another great strategy to boost the effect of compounding with Online Trading is by keeping investing small amount of money each month. For example, you have £200 spare income each month – you start trading on eToro with £200 and seeing that your strategy works and you’re making a steady profit, keep adding £200 to your bank each month. At least for first three years. What effect this causes? MASSIVE increase in overall bank value!

For example, if you start trading with £200 and get steady 10% each month BUT do not add any more money to your bank, at the end of five year term your bank will be £60,896.33. On the other hand, if you keep investing additional £200 for next five years and still make 10% monthly gain, your bank after five years will be £728,555.93. That’s a massive difference and reason why I recommend you to keep investing, even small amounts of money, each month to help compounding effect do it’s work at maximum rate!

To sum it up – the longer you leave money “in system” and let compounding do the work, the greater profits you’ll face. Think about all the large investment companies, same Warren Buffett – they also invest money in long term and they perfectly know that it’s all about constant strategy and patience – be it a economic boom or recession.

My personal goal is to achieve 20% – 30% yearly yield with as minimum risk as possible. Because I know how those 20% – 30% each year accumulate over longer period of time! And this is all passive income, don’t forget about that.

Trading Gold/Silver/Oil/Stocks/Indexes

Yes, eToro also offers trading with Gold, Silver, Oil and this is actually something I’m looking into on my own, apart from copying currency traders on eToro. I really believe that there’s a huge potential in Oil and Silver (gold is over-priced in my opinion, this is not the best time to purchase it). Particularly OIL is what interests me most as I’m confident that oil price will increase significantly over next 5-10 years. What I’m looking forward is buying oil using eToro’s platform as a long term investment and make huge ROI when price rises in few years time.

Here’s another interesting feature for eToro – LEVERAGE! Leverage means that you can trade with more money than you actually have in your account. It’s hard to explain in one paragraph but for example, with a bank of £200 you can purchase OIL worth £1000. This means 5 x more profit when price goes up and you decide to sell. If you’re interested more about how Leverage function works, check it out in your eToro account.

Conclusions

I wanted to share this with you just to show what’s out there apart from eBay, online shops and Amazon Marketplace. I do not plan on investing all my money in this and quit doing everything else, at least not for now. Obviously, risks are still involved with this kind of investment but potential profits are huge! If you copy good, long term traders and do not make any stupid mistakes, it would be really difficult to lose your initial investment.

Yes, risks are involved so DO NOT invest all the money you have or do similar stupid stuff! You should only invest money you can afford to loose, no matter what happens. You can start with few hundred pounds and trade for 3-4 months. If you’re getting steady profit, then you can invest more. But in no way I can guarantee you that you’ll make money.

I really hope this rather lengthy article is somehow valuable to you! I know that it’s a not a Bible on how to make money on eToro but I have tried covering at least all the basic stuff and shared you my detailed experience. Any questions, feel free to leave a comment below this post and I’ll try to give you more detailed advice.

All trading involves risk. Only risk capital you’re prepared to lose. Past performance does not guarantee future results. This post is for educational purposes and should not be considered as investment advice.

Hi Andrew, very interesting comments about etoro. I have just started copying and investing quite heavily. I notice a comment about withdrawal limits. If I have deposited all my funds via debit card, how in the future can I withdraw my potential profits. Will it simply be a case of setting up my direct bank account details with etoro for large withdrawals.?? Thanks in advance to comment.

The account is active now but not buy order are not getting executed. Raised a ticket with the customer services looks like they will take 4 days to reply. Please advise if there are any videos available to learn. Thanks!

I have submitted all the documents to eToro and my application is pending verification since 3 days now. I have also transferred some funds in to it. The account shows available funds and allowing me to place the buy order which I have done. The crypto price went further below my buy order price but I’m not able to see anywhere the executed order or number of cryptos I have purchases. Can you please let me know how to check the executed order.

Hi Andrew,
I am leaving in Toronto, when I open account, the regulation said not accept Toronto of Canada, but some certain city is accepted, also ask some ID for verification, when I give my current address , the verification still shows pending, I v been waiting for few weeks already , because my address. So , while I am waiting I did play virtual account and made some money too, in this case , do you think it is ok to deposit my real money if my account verification will be pending forever. Thank you Andrew.
Gloria

Any plans on being a copy trader yourself? I know you put some work in it every other day you might not want to share for free, but I’m pretty sure there are some upsides for you as well (I’ve read something about lower spreads for example).
Or are your copied trades ignored when you would be copied?

Hi Grace, thanks in part to Andrew, I’ve been learning the ropes on etoro for several years…it’s been a roller-coaster, but I think I’ve nailed it now. My name on etoro is ‘themoneymagnet’…thanks Andrew, you’ve helped completely change my investment strategy and financial freedom looks more achievable than ever!

Thanks so much Andrew my only concern is ive heard so many people using online trading having issues with withdrawing how can you guarantee etoro pays out?
I know you say it does and you just need to give your proof of identity etc but how do I know it will pay put unlike many others that people still struggle to withdraw on some scams.
I’m not saying etoro is a scam but others are and this is where I need to know they genuinely pay out .

I personally can’t guarantee you anything as I’m not the owner of eToro.

But I have never had any problems withdrawing money from them. Plus – they have millions of members – imagine how quickly bad news would spread if they don’t allow withdrawals. Those horror stories you see/read online – it’s a super small fraction of the actual eToro user base and usually are associated with user fraud – using different identities, ID scams, not willing to send proof of ID etc.

Lastly – eToro is a financial institution that is regulated in the UK by the FCA, just like regular banks. So if eToro would theoretically refuse you to withdraw your money, you could seek help at FCA and get it sorted out.

How difficult is to withdraw money from eToro? There are a few scam brokers and I had bad experience with one recently where they simply refuse your withdrawal requests any number of times you put in, so I am a bit cautious. Have you been able to withdraw funds from eToro without any issues?

I have heard that etoro allow to withdraw only maximum amount of what we have deposit. Is that correct? Suppose I have made 300$ deposit via credit card, and I can only withdraw from with the amount of 300$? If we have made a good trading and earn more that what we deposit, could we withdraw?

Hello Sir!
I have a question about Etoro, if you could help me
well,
can I start with 50$ , and try to buy stocks by myself! (” because the minimum price to buy a stock is 10$ “), then when I earn 100$ , start copy a traders ?
and thank you

In order to copy a trader, you will need a minimum of 100 or 200 dollar; euro or Pounds. In this story you told us that you have just invested £200, and you copied 5 people. In order to copy 5 people you will need at least 500 or 750. This “story” has some reasoning, you can follow 10 traders and you can place buy or sell order (whenever they act) in a mt4 platform and clicking on their portfolio and then to open trades copy the stop loss and take profit position. Else with £200 it is impossible to copy 5 or 10 traders on etoro!

I am wondering what happens if your PayPal account gets blocked or suspended as it happens often with PayPal and sometimes without any decent reason as you know. So how about withdrawal after investing loads of money to Etoro platform via PayPal after your account gets suspended for example?
How would you take those money out if it has to be the same source as you have invested money from.

Hi Andrew. I found out about eToro today, and naturally went out to research and found you blog. Thing is now eToro allows for 20 traders at any time. What are you thoughts on this, the more the merrier? Of course you will have to spend more time evaluating their performance. If so I assume it would be rational to multiply your initial investment?

Good article – need to really print it out and read it carefully, but it seems a robust method of choosing people to copy. My only small comment I would have regards the info you put above it your statement that you pay 0% tax in the UK on gambling winnings. The official line from the HMRC is that if you do not have any other regular taxable income other than gambling you will probably be classified as a professional gambler (your trade) and may loose your BIM22017 exemption and as such will have to pay tax – the easiest (legal) way around this is to have a taxable income and trade at the same time – even if you make more on the trading, you will be OK. As a side note anyone with “day trader” or such on their passport or facebook / linkedin etc as their profession will have a harder time convincing HMRC not to make a case against them.

Hey this was really awesome. Thanks alot. Im 22 and planning to invest some.money into this. I have a small question. Is there a way to add money to etoro using a debit card and can i receive funds in another way, as in a direct transfer to my savings account, etc.

What I find a little difficult is that i read many reviews saying that its difficult to withdraw money from etoro and all that. I am having second thoughts. Is this true and have you had any similar problem?

Yes, they ask you to verify your identity but if you’re not hiding your real ID, it’s not a problem. PayPal also verifies identity in a similar way and that is something all financial institutions must do by law.

Hi Andrew, I like your site and the articles are really well structured, thanks.

I have invested with Etoro a similar amount and adopted the strategy you have suggested currently spread across 7 traders.
Its progressing well but I am also nervous about many people having withdrawal issues. You mentioned you were looking to withdraw the orig 10k investment …did you do that?
Also really looking forward to the 2014 review – when will that be released, thanks, Gareth.

Yes, I did take out my original investment. Not sure really what people brag about – all they ask is to verify identity and use same payment method for withdrawal that you used for uploading money into account. It’s all basic, anti money laundering stuff and doesn’t cost you anything extra.

I think people who complain about this, use fake identities, fake address etc. and then can’t verify their identity.

I found your article very informative and very helpful, I’m new myself to looking into this kind of thing copying other trades, It as you say sure and steady is a good angle.
There is one thing I read which alarmed me that you were looking to invest in oil for the long term as you were convinced it could only increase in value – I hope it hasn’t been a bad one for you.

Hi Andrew
Great post. i started up with etoro deposited £200 ($300) and did some good research following your steps but on most decent traders etoro will only let you copy them with a minimum of $100 so im copying 3 traders right now or can I follow them for less and spread my portfolio to guard against big losses? Am i doing something wrong. I’m going to invest £200 every month in this – saving for my dream house! haha so is just a case of copying each trader for $100?

Also bought EAB – its really great and will book my hour chat in soon – keep up the great work!

Hi Andrew,
Simple question- How can I invest in you:)
Excellent site/blog,I,m very interested in etoro,probably your one millionth customer,saying the same thing ,lol,but like everyone else,it’s an intimidating world to the uninitiated, so I guess I,m looking for a gentle hug before taking the plunge.
My hard earned pound would seriously like some new buddies,so I intend to begin using your filter system,and hopefully settle in for the long term.
Thank you for the great and common sense advice and will keep you informed of my progress,good or bad.
A Happy and Prosperous New a Year to you.

Hi Andrew, is this still working for you? I notice the post talks about profits made almost 3 years ago, do you still trade and do well with this method? Just looking at options that could return more than the paltry bank interest right now!

Hi Andrew,
Thanks for the tips, they’ve been invaluable in navigating this intimidating field as a beginner.

One problem is that there seems to be a crash in the Euro this week (I think :-s) which has caused about 60% of my investors to have drastic and uncharacteristic losses over a short period of time. According to your advice I should drop them, but this doesn’t seem right in light of their solid history and the unforeseeable crash.

Yes, such sudden changes are not un-common. I personally would take a close look @ past performance and if it’s a really good trader, with good/positive history for at least 12 months, then I would probably keep them on and just see how it goes.

Actually I have a couple other questions I forgot to ask. I noticed earlier you said you use your credit card to fund your account and deposit money to etoro. Does that count as a cash advance on your credit card?

Also, if I copy someone who does manual trades and also copies other people, does it only copy their manual trades for me or does it also copy their copied people as well?

It was a great post. I have some confusion about etoro. I started trading in gold but when the week ended my trading was disabled automatically. Is that according to the rule or I have been missing something? Thank you in advance

When I usually start copying a new trader, I don’t copy existing trades (in most cases). Mostly because it’s playing games then deciding on which trades to copy, which not as there will always be some good trades in green and some in reds.

As for checking trader’s performance – yes, at least once a week you want to monitor each trader’s performance and make adjustments if needed.

I just started with etoro.. I don’t have enough funds to start big so I put 50$ and found one guy to copy (with LOW risk), should I wait a month now, invest another 50$ and diversify? ..should I find a second person to copy?
What would you do if you had as little as 50$ at the very begining?

If you’re just starting with $50, I would recommend it splitting into two parts and invest in 2 traders. Next month add another $50 to cover another 2 investors. Continue doing this until you have at least 10 traders copied.

I set $50 and I can have a few cents of profit daily… sometimes I can see $0,20 and sometimes -0,20 …
When I copy a trader should I copy all open trades or copy only a few manually?
What is a sign that I should change a trader to copy?
Now I copy: https://openbook.etoro.com/santoshtiwari/overview/
Should I copy a trade and check it just once a week or more frequent?

Hi Andrew…
First of all..thanks so much for your blog..you sem like a very reliable person!!!Thanks indeed for your information!!!
A question:
Based on the above example…a person has one million in the ETORO system…and manages a 5% monthly return…equals 50K…But, does that mean he would have to prepare his trade for high risk???Let’s say that person who has one million invested/deposited…if he/she adjusts his trades for a 95%low risk…can he still make the 50K???
I don’t know if I was clear…
Thank you anyway in advance 🙂

1) Advanced filters still is best way to find traders, Make sure you look past first 50 or so traders and also try Sorting results by gain, profit etc. It’s a shame that eToro did take down manual filters as that was my preferred way of finding traders.

2) When you copy a trader, you can select whatever you want to start copying all new trades from now on OR copy already opened trades. So you want to select 2nd option if you want to copy all existing trades.

I have been reading this article for the past hour now but I still don’t understand anything. I registered with etoro when they first launched I got a call from 3 of their agents giving me guidance but I didn’t get what they were talking about. one even offered to give me free class when he gets home so that I can trade, and win and also copy him. but I didn’t give in because I was afraid even till now I’m still afraid to invest in forex. Too bad this could be my only way of being successful online but I’m still afraid.

If after reading this, watching video etc. you still don’t understand, you shouldn’t follow with this idea. While eToro is a very user friendly platform, you still need to have basic understanding and knowledge in finance, mathematics in general and online trading.

My doubt is: If you are copying 10 Traders: one or more of them this with several open orders and checks you that some of these orders that a profit of say 10%, some negative, in which case you will manually closing the orders or you are not positive moves to nothing and leaves everything on behalf of Traders?

HI Andrew
I STARTED STOCK TRADING IN THE BEGGING OF 2012 AND TILL NOW, I LOST MY HARDLY EARNED MONEY WORTH $800. SO I AM VERY SCARED OF STOCK MARKET.
PLZ SUGGEST ME HOW CAN I RECTIFY THIS?
WILL TRADING IN CURRENCY WILL HELP ME TO GET MY MONEY BACK?

Please may I ask if you have found any way of seeing who the top copied and rated traders were historically, e.g. from 1, 2 or three years ago. I emailed etoro about this and they basically said to look through all the traders profiles one at a time (there are thousands!)

My worry is that we are being presented with the traders who are doing well over the past six months or a year, but that could just be a lucky streak. There surely is NO certainty that they will continue to do well.

With some serious google research I managed to get the IDs of traders who were well rated a couple of years ago. Many of them have crashed and burned, presumably taking their copiers with them! That includes some who appeared to be careful low-risk traders.

I’m also having trouble finding unbiased review of etoro. Most of the reviews and blogs seem to be by people promoting etoro to get the affiliate marketing fees.

I have set up a virtual funds account, but I’m very reluctant to risk real money until I can get more unbiased information.

No, there’s no such historical data available. I would also like to be able to go further back to 1 year data when filtering traders but unfortunately it’s not possible at this time.

Trading is risky and surely there are many traders who go down on a regular basis, that’s why you want to monitor them at least on a weekly basis and get rid of bad performers as soon as you spot them.

Don’t risk with real money if you’re not comfortable with this – just use your virtual account for a year or so and see how it goes.

Thanks,
Andrew

P.S. As for eToro itself – it’s a legit as legit a financial company can be. They’re licensed by FCA in the UK and I have not had any problems with money withdrawals and deposits.

Sorry about that confusion – in the beginning there was a limit of 5 traders you can max copy (that’s why I have that line there). Now there’s no such limit so you can copy 10 or 20 traders if you want.

Hi Andrew,
I enjoyed reading your blog andI am considering sigining up for etoro but I just wanted to ask you about tax. I am from the UK and I noticed that you said profits gained from etoro are tax free. Don’t you have to declare these earnings from etoro on a self assessment to be taxed or did you not have to pay any tax after your first year?
Cheers

Hi Andrew
I just join etoro last night and i am finding it difficult to locate real and profitable trader but with your educative lecture i receive today i will try them out, but still if you can give 10 trader that is well tested i wouldn’t mind.
Please you can send them through my email.
Thanks

How nice it would be if everything would be served already for us, on a golden plate, ah? 🙂

If you’re not willing to put some work into this, better not start, seriously. You absolutely MUST find traders yourself as otherwise you won’t even know when it’s right time to change them.

If you can’t find all 10 in one go, that’s not a problem! Start with 2 or 3 and allocate 10% of your bank to each. And then you can keep adding new traders as time goes by and you’re getting better at this.

Is this something you still consistently do, if so I’d love an update of how its been going for you the last few years regarding EToro. I’ve only just come across this post so I’m really interested to hear what you still think about it and if you feel its still worth getting into. Look forward to you reply!

I,ve been trading for a while now and results seem not too bad, an overall good profit margin and upwards trend, I.ve had a few nightmares early on before employing loss prevention.
I would be very interested to see how Mr T algorithm works, but the whole process seems fairly straight forward and can generate some good profit, I have split my funds for short mid and long term, therefore giving an income and also reinvestment of capitial to ensure compounding effect.
A good source of knowledge is babypips worth a good look into learning FX trading.
I also have moved away from copying traders as it’s hard to find good one’s with the right strategies, I just set my own plan and learn as I go, I have a fair few copiers so must be doing something right.

Happy trading…

ps I would always advise demo trading to start and use as much bonuses when using real money as possible to build up to a good trading point.

Thanks for a great site. Very interested too, to hear about how your etoro experience has been, I just started out, and your site was a big help for me to understand how to copy. One thing i wonder though, is when you look at the chart for a trader, say the 6 months chart, and there is one blue line representing total equity, and one green line representing realized equity. If the green line has a steady yield, and the blue doesn’t, what then? Is that just as good as having a steady yield in the blue?

Thanks for the reply. What do you enter into the filters to find the traders you need? I have had a look and finding those that match the criteria of the example trader here are impossible! Any tips are appreciated. Look forward to your update in the new year.

Great article Andrew; good to see someone highlighting the power of cumulative interest 😉

Have you worked out which method of depositing offers more bang for your buck? I used paypal to deposit by taking the $ direct from my card (Sterling). Hopefully my bank card offered a more favorable exchange rate than if paypal made the exchange but I imagine I could do better using my card/bank direct or moneybookers? Do you have any thoughts?

Also are you worrying about currency fluctuations when it comes to withdrawals in the future? I suppose the fact that profits are not tax liable means even with 20%/40% swings returns are still very favorable (hopefully!) 😉

Why are profits not taxable by the way? Do they fall under the same rules as gambling?

I have tried this method on a practice account since I found your site. I am just wondering, what filters on the search engine of etoro do you use? The advanced filters. I’m struggling to find consistent low risk traders. I am actually making profit on my practice account and I almost have enough money that I would like to invest in this. I’m just looking for a way to refine my search a bit more and find some great traders that can give me a good low risk return. Any other tips would be much appreciated. And an update on how you have been progressing too. Interested in your take on the whole oil to increase in the future.

As explained in the article – low risk, high trade success rate, established performance without huge spikes in trading history, portfolio allocation and traders they follow are most important things to look for.

To find new traders I use Search & Filters, monitor Top Traders charts on a weekly basis and sometimes find some good picks in eToro’s newsletter too.

To be honest, I haven’t been able to spend much time on this for the last year or so, I take it as a hobby of mine but still, on average I make 5-10% each month with just one loosing month in last year.

Yes, I also have invested in Oil, but that’s a long term investment I hope to make some crazy returns in 5-10 years time.

1) I change them on a regular basis, which means I would have to update this post each time I change a trader on eToro.

2) I really don’t want to take any responsibility/pressure on by doing this. As money and some risks are involved, I really don’t want to be responsible for a losing month or something. You should always trade with money you can afford to lose but I know for sure that not all people understands this.

Plus I trade with Gold, Oil and some stocks on my eToro account now too, so it would really mix it all up.

Hi Andrew,
As a very happy 60 Day Blue Print customer of yours I thought I would check in and see what you are looking at now. This looks once again a great opportunity, especially coming from such a reliable source, I will be checking it out for sure. Have been seriously burnt in the past by Forex but this does appear to be a much different concept. Thanks again for the steer.

Hi Andrew
There are a lot of what seem good traders on E Toro, most of whom seem to have a medium risk strategy, would you entertain using anyone with a slightly higher risk approach than low, in order to provide diversification? Thanks Ian

good information on here. I have a demo account with etoro and copy trader is great – i was wondering how good is etoro when it comes to withdrawing all those huge profits are they reliable and is your money safe in there hands ?

I have made several withdrawals without any problems – it takes about 5 days for PayPal withdrawals and you have to be ready to submit some documentation for ID verification. Apart from that, there are no problems in getting your money out of eToro.

Yes, I’m still trading on eToro – it’s not like it takes a lot of time so I basically monitor my portfolio once a week or so and make any changes, if needed. Had few slower months in summer but still – overall it’s a healthy profit when you look @ rolling 12 month period.

They’re now launching STOCKS in beta version and you can purchase long term stocks, like Apple, Google, Amazon and other tech companies. Another great way to diversify your portfolio for a long term profit. And it’s so easy to do these transactions!

What a great article and great tip! I’d heard of EToro and obviously Forex trading but only ever seen the Biz Opp type brigade promoting it and usually at a cost along with the usual smoke and mirrors. As a client of yours it’s great to hear your real life review on it and I for one will definitely be having a crack at it, it would be silly not too I reckon!

Hey Andrew, I’ve just signed up to eToro and started practice trading with virtual money…. thanks for explaining it all so clearly. I was wondering how things were now going for you, three months on from your original post? Still making money?

It’s still going very strong! Haven’t seen a loosing month yet and on average I reach my 10% monthly profit target. Currently I have a very strong portfolio of 10 traders and only need to change 1 or 2 traders once a month or so.

Hi Andrew,
Seems like a cool strategy. I am a big fan of yours but I think you should emphasise the use of leverage more, as using leverage can also be highly dangerous. You are effectively gambling with money you do not have when using leverage and it can be a downfall for any beginner trader (I’ve heard some horror stories on this subject)! Only gamble with what you can afford to lose! I use the term gamble loosley as IMO trading stocks and shares is nothing more than glorified gambling unless you are actually a market maker or have inside scoop.

Using leverage increases your risks yes, but it’s not gambling as essentially you’re doing same trades, just with more money. And you can’t lose more than you actually have in your account, so it’s not like you don’t know what you risk with.

Invested $1026.4 USD and after 10 days I got 1034.28 USD so around 10 USD profit in 10 days = 1% gain in 10 days so roughly 3 % per month which beats the 1.85% rate on yearly basis with saving at banks.

Made some start-up mistakes with not using all the money to copy traders because I wanted to buy currency for myself too instead of copying traders but after these results I’ll rather copy then learn everything about pip’s again (read a lot about forex trading a year ago)

Small tip for checking if the person you’re copying is profitable:
Click on the Login tab, select CopyTrader view
This way you’ll see if the person is profitable (%gain) and if so how much.
Plus if a guy is only profitable for 1% then you can replace his with someone that could be more profitable.

@Andrew: What gains do you find acceptable and when do you un-copy someone (offcourse when he’s not gaining but do you also drop them with they only make 1%?)
(Maybe it’s nice to include the above tip in the article so that people can see who’s good and who’s bad to copy)

I have, just like many, have always wanted to do online trading whether it be Forex or other sites but have been really intimadated with simply just handing over my hard earned dollar while not knowing what the hell I’m doing.

This seems like a very practical and beneficial way to come into the game at my own pace while utilizing the strengths and experience of others. Leverage! I think I’ll open up a practice account for awhile before making the plunge. So I thank you for one, in sharing another wonderful opportunity where people all over the world can benefit from, and two, being a trust worthy source of information!

And you’re right – Open Book and copying traders is a perfect way to LEARN more about Forex trading without risking with your hard earned money that much. I have learned a lot during last few months, especially about oil and gold trading.

Looks to be a positive concept, however i’d like to see more details on how your investment would be spent.

For example if I copied a trader, and allocated for example 20%, is my 20% proportional to his 100%? ie if my 20% is worth $200, and he uses say, 10% of his bank to buy something at a value of $200 but that’s all he does, will my entire $200 also go onto that same deal? or will just 10% of my $200 go on it?

Hopefully that makes sense, and the reason I ask is as a lot of dealers I have found so far do not exactly match your criteria above, I have found 2 so far who generally fit, the rest fit usually 4 out of the 5. There are lots of dealers showing consistent growth, with mostly positive open trades and no obvious long term negative trades, but if I copied one of these people, and they made a single trade of $200 and my $200 was matched, then they continued afterwards and made a lot of other trades, would my entire 20% be potentially locked into that bad trade? Or just a small percentage of my $200 relative to how much of his bank he invested on that trade?

Sounds good, my other query was how it works when you stop/start copying a trader. Does it immediately open or close positions based on their current portfolio? Or does it only take effect on new positions?

ie: If they already had trades open when you copy, does it automatically buy up the same position despite the fact the price may have changed? or will it wait and just mirror and new opening on position? Likewise but opposite for when you stop copying, does it immediately sell any positions you currently have open that you copied from that trader, or does it wait for that trader to close the position and then update yours?

Also, if you are copying a trader, they make a bad trade and you want out, I assume you can override that trade and sell as required? You are not stuck in the position until the original trader closes it right?

Looks great but noticed one thing (sceptic in me!) – Is the £1349 profit you have made purely from trading within etoro? It’s just that it looks like the video above is an affilaite link which I guess you get money for?

Yes, that £1349 is purely from trading on eToro – this blog post is first time I’m promoting eToro program.

Please note – everyone who joins eToro can use their refer a friend program to earn $50 for each person who signs up through your link. Friend you refer also gets a $50 bonus. For people with limited budgets it could be a great way to boost your trading bank.

No, that’s not true – there are way more than one trader suitable for this strategy. Don’t just look @ Rankings, there are other ways to find traders via search, friends and followers.

I won’t share my traders as I don’t want to take such responsibility – that’s why I created this blog post and explained how to find and monitor traders. If I would simply publish my own traders, everyone would copy same without much thinking.

By the way, as it turns out you can copy up to 10 traders, make sure you use that to diversify your portfolio!

I haven’t done any withdrawals yet but it can be easily done from your account. Only thing you have to do is verify your identity by uploading scanned ID/drivers license and a recent utility bill. This is a common practice with all Forex brokers, from what I have seen. Obviously, you can’t withdraw bonus money you received when signing up + there’s a $5 processing fee for each withdrawal.

Thanks very much for this info, I’ll be using it for sure as I really want to minimize potential risks as much as possible.

Thanks again,
Andrew

P.S. On eToro website it still says 5 traders, could be that they haven’t simply updated that yet. Open Book is still in Beta testing, that’s why (I think) they have those limits in first place. When they launch final version, maybe we’ll be able to copy un-limited number of traders.

eToro is a reputable company with more than 1.75 million users, established 5 years ago. Everything can happen in life of course but from information I have gathered, they seem as safe as any other Forex broker out there.

It sounds really interesting this from reading through your article, its something my little brain takes a lot of time to understand and comprehend how stocks and shares work and its something I’ve never really looked much into as I’m not great at figures and graphs etc. But this eToro part does sound certainly something to find out more about. I certainly could do with some extra passive money coming in each month. I just have a couple of questions I hope you’ll be kind enough to answer.

With making £1349 in December, how was November, October, does it change much month to month, ?

How much did you invest orginally and when did you start?

So are you topping up each month already with £200 like you say its best to do or do you work upto this gradually.

Lastly how often have you changed traders since you began, do you change often, I would of thought if you choose the top 5 , won’t they be the best and know there stuff and will know in the future, or isn’t that really how it works.

It varies from month to month but in general, over last three months it’s about 10% per month. Worst was my first month with +6%, December has been best so far. January started very well but then with EUR price going way down below everyone’s expectations I lost some of the good profits. Still looking for +7 to +9% this month.

I started in October with £10k, which gave me $1k (USD) bonus. So the total starting bank was about £10600.

No, I’m not topping up as my initial investment was already big enough. I’ll trade with this bank for 1-2 years and then decide on a top-up strategy.

I have changed 4 or 5 traders so far. Some initial choices I made were not that good, I didn’t have proper filter system in place. I have changed 2 traders because of bad performance. Monitoring and dropping traders is biggest challenge with this system. Most top traders are performing well for a limited time – for most it’s 1-3 years, for some – even less. That’s why you want to review each trader’s performance on a weekly basis.

Thanks for your reply, I’ll probs have to give it a miss for now and maybe join when I have more money I could afford to lose I guess, with £200 investment it would take a while to show much money back for the time spent. I didn’t realize it would be such an amount though of initial investment, your £10k is probably what is best to invest to actually get some money back a month but I sadly don’t have a spare £10k. Certainly be interested to hear though how you progress through the months and what sort of monthly profits you are getting in a year.

Great article Andrew, been to a seminar about Forex in the past but been put off by the huge learning curve and risk to capital. This is exactly the type of thing I’ve been looking for, seems like an excellent idea.

Forex trading, eToro is totally genuine opportunity. The problem is that so called “Internet Gurus” have built portrait that Forex is about trading robots (you should buy of course, lol), people making millions each month (Clickbank e-books) etc. etc. In a word, it’s very difficult to find down to earth, un-biased information.

This is a great opportunity, I agree with you! And that’s why I actually started trialing this concept, as I always tried to stay away from Forex. Idea behind Copy Trader feature is what got my attention as I have no intentions of becoming a day trader myself.

Ohh, and opportunity to buy Oil with a leverage, that’s also very powerful concept in my opinion.